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A pandemic is scary for everyone, but especially for young children who don’t understand why they can’t play with their friends or visit their grandparents. Deborah Rotenstein, MD, a board-certified pediatric endocrinologist, believes that part of a pediatrician’s role is to help patients feel safe and cared for. To that end, she has written a book to explain the coronavirus to preschoolers.

Before the pandemic, Dr. Rotenstein had planned to travel to Israel to visit her granddaughter, then 3½…

In the spring of 2020, before George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, the U.S. public had already heard that Black people were disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus.1 Pediatricians who have seen health inequities in their patient populations for years — due to the social determinants of health (SDOH) or systemic racism — were not surprised.

“Health disparities are driven by social disparities,” says board-certified pediatrician Elizabeth “…

Photo: A virtual ECHO Autism classroom

While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused health care chaos in many parts of the United States and world, another less-visible epidemic has been brewing under the surface for decades: the behavioral and mental health crisis among children and adolescents.

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For years, the ABP has actively worked to diversify the membership of our committees and subboards. A more diverse group of volunteers will help ensure that pediatric exams are unbiased. But we also know that guarding against implicit (unconscious) bias requires a clear and ongoing prevention and evaluation strategy.

To help prevent implicit bias in exams, the ABP introduced training materials that focus on preventing content in our exams that may lead to bias. These training materials have been provided to the pediatrician volunteers who write, review, and approve exam items (questions). And in 2020, the ABP also began an additional process to evaluate individual exam items for…

To achieve its goal of continuous learning and improvement, the ABP frequently engages with pediatricians, trainees, and others to collect ideas and insights to make certification more relevant to both physician and patient.

“We see immense value in strengthening our connections with pediatricians — and learning from them how we can improve,” says Laurel Leslie, MD, MPH, ABP Vice President for Research.

Dr. Leslie and her team coordinate the surveys that pediatricians take after completing an examination, enrolling in another certification cycle, or contacting the ABP’s Support Center. They also engage with user panels (a focus group that meets several times) of practicing…

Carol Carraccio, MD, MA, is a giant in the world of competency-based medical education (CBME), which focuses on assessing the readiness of trainees to advance to practice or fellowship.

Dr. Carraccio, former Vice President for CBME at the ABP, retired in June after nine years at the ABP and more than 30 years in pediatric education.

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Quality improvement (QI) has made an optimist of Ulfat Shaikh, MD, MPH, MS.

“It makes you a problem solver,” she says, “instead of someone who gets disheartened by every little problem that comes your way.”

Dr. Shaikh is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California (UC) Davis School of Medicine, and Medical Director for Quality at UC Davis Health. She was awarded the ABP 2020 Paul V. Miles (PVM) Fellowship in…

When Thomas Glenn was born in 1990 with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), his parents were given two choices — make him comfortable until he died or have the first of three open-heart surgeries. However, the physicians warned, the few infants who had survived surgery for HLHS had not lived long enough to go home.

His parents chose surgery.…

Photo: The Adolescent Subboard meets virtually with ABP staff.

Throughout a typical year, hundreds of board-certified pediatricians leave their hospitals and private practices to travel to the ABP office in Chapel Hill, NC, to participate as volunteers in multi-day board, subboard, and committee meetings. There they write examination questions, determine scoring standards, and conduct other business of the ABP.

But 2020 was not a…

Data collected by the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) about the pediatric workforce provide the backbone for a new series of fact sheets developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The 50 fact sheets — one for each state— illustrate the impact of pediatric subspecialty shortages on children’s access to health care. 

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